>AD&D handbook comes out in 1978>Pool of Radiance comes out in 1988>dwarves, gnomes, elves and halflings can't be clerics>gnomes can't be illusionistsWhat the fuck? I knew about the demi-human level restrictions but I've never seen a version of D&D where everyone except Humans, Elves, and Half-Elves can only be fighters and thieves. Is it worth it to play these games with the Gold Box companion mod to get around some of these stupid rules?
>>4057327AD&D is part of 1e, 2e didn't come out until 1987.
>>4057327Welcome to AD&D
>>4057424Shouldn’t have tried to fiend folio him.
>>4057410>>4057424I could have sworn my dad's PHB was AD&D and not 2e. I remember Halfling had druid as a class with parentheses which IIRC meant that NPC halflings could be druids, but not players which was incredibly stupid.I mean Pool of Radiance is missing paladins and rangers so I guess no illusionist is just limitations of making the game.
>>4057451Yeah it's a retarded rule, there's no reason for it to exist. I'll admit the level caps are questionable (it's meant to be a tradeoff for the racial abilities and games aren't meant to get much higher than 10) but NPC demihumans having exclusive access to classes is pants-on-head retarded.
>>40574102e is still "AD&D", they didn't change the branding to just D&D again until 3e
>>4057451>>4057542It probably said "Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition" is why
>>4057542Yes but the differences between D&D, AD&D, and AD&D2e are large enough to consider them completely separate, even though they're fairly compatible with one-another.
>>4057546Yeah, not saying 1e and 2e don't have some differences that are reflected in the Gold Box games. Just clarifying.
I'm sorry this is unrelated but I don't want to start a new thread. I've made this post at /vr/ too.I just wanted to share that I've been playing Spelljammer lately and been having a lot of fun!Spelljammer has low score on Steam and reviews saying it's buggy and a slog but it has been my favorite out of the AD&D video games on Steam so far.I've even printed out the manual and kept notes which I haven't done in ages!Anyone else played this? Any opinions?
>>4057526>Yeah it's a retarded rule, there's no reason for it to exist.D&D in a nutshell
>>4057749ooh I didn't know there was a spelljammer game. How sci-fi is it?
>>4057859It's like "opposite" of sci-fi, if that makes sense?If you know the setting or that one kid's movie Treasure Planet, it's basically that!Like preparing 10 AD&D characters doing inventories, equipments, spells and all!My captain is silly gnome fighter, to tie this back to the topic!
>>4057961!
>>4057327Just make everybody human warrior. Then switch to wizard at level 13. Some ways through secret of the silver blades you have fully fledged fighter wizards with 140+ hitpoints, 5/2 attacks and able to lob delayed fireballs around. Only way to play pools of darkness without ripping your hairs out.
>>4058223I had a feeling I was dooming myself with my ultra diverse party I started. I will take this advice.
>>4057749>>4057961Sounds really neat, gonna give it a go.
>>4058223Anything is fine as long as they all have 18 dex. Losing initiative in the later games is ridiculously punishing
arguably the most calm D&D thread outside of /tg/, this.
I had good success with doing a single human and dual classing them as a Fighter, into a cleric. Then multiclassing all the other characters with at least Fighter or Cleric. You only need one Thief, for some sidequests, but backstab is strong, and possibly worth widely applying. You want to be able to use good gear and have plenty of healing magic, because the natural healing is slow.
>>4060240I think the plan of starting with all human fighters and then getting clerics and mages as multiclass, with one thief, is the way to go. Are there any race- or class-specific quests you give up with the later games if you do this? That's my only question. Only the first three are on the C64 but I can transfer all my characters through all three games, so if suddenly in the second or third game I need an Elf or a Dwarf it seems important to know at the outset.I know this is akin to cheating but I don't want to screw myself out of parts of future games you know?
>>4068533Character transfers are pointless.You easily hit the level caps long before the end with fresh characters in every goldbox game except for Pool of Darkness and Dark Queen of Krynn and those two games have a cap of level 40 when extra levels at some point become meaningless. THAC0 and save throws stop growing past level 17 so all you get is 1-3 extra HP every level.There are no race-specific quests and high level games penalize non-humans hard with racial level caps.
>>4068533I always used all humans and never noticed anything; the games are so monty haul that you'll be throwing +5 swords in the trash to make room so missing anything hardly registers. There's also only a tiny number of times a thief has any significant use after PoR, if any
>>4057327Basic had the races be their own classes.
>>4059600/tg/ is full of Spoonies. Bitter, angry, alone, left to rot with a bunch of expensive plastic and moth-eaten books from the 80's and 90's.
>>4057424human yes
>>4069210Race as class combined with prerequisite requirements works to reinforce the implied setting and rarity of non-humans, there's nothing wrong with it
>>4069592Aside from the fact that it makes playing as a race incredibly boring and shallow.
>>4069848It's the exact opposite, retard. Making class primary and race secondary makes playing a non-human adventurer a superficial commodity, rather than a gameplay altering choice.
Racial differences matter is kino. If you want to play as a 3 foot tall midget, it should be more significant than a bonus feat or +1 to ac. If you want to play a handicapped character for RP, you should be allowed to tell your story.
>>4070802this. good fantasy should have hobbits and gnomes become prime targets for ironpilled cannibalistic warriors
>>4070557>Making class primary and race secondary makes playing a non-human adventurer a superficial commodity, rather than a gameplay altering choice.Aside from that making absolutely no fucking sense from a multitude of angles:>There is no “primary” or “secondary” distinction anywhere in the rules. You invented a hierarchy and then became angry about its consequences like a spaz retard.>Race is what the character is while class is just what the retard learned to do so making race into a class only makes sense if you also force "human" to be a class you fucking clown.>A racial choice can alter attributes, senses, anatomy, movement, resistances, lifespan, magic, equipment, and social treatment. That is quite literally gameplay alteration.>Classes naturally contain more advancement because professions involve skills that improve through training. A dwarf does not need to gain ten levels of being biologically dwarven for dwarfhood to matter.>Making race a class does not guarantee depth. “Elf” can still amount to “fighter who knows one spell and has pointy ears.”>Race-as-class reduces an entire species to one job where humans get fighter, cleric, thief, wizard, assassin, but dwarves get the prestigious career path of "professional dwarf".>“Superficial commodity” is not even what commodity means you illiterate fuck, you meant "cosmetic option" which is only true if race has zero mechanicsYour whole argument is just "two different systems can't both matter" as if a game is only allowed one meaningful choice, cope harder.
>>4071148>>There is no “primary” or “secondary” distinction anywhere in the rules. You invented a hierarchy and then became angry about its consequences like a spaz retard.Because that's how it functions in D&D you stupid faggot.
>>4071190Oh, really? So, what is the significance of it being primary and secondary, you stupid faggot?
>>4071228The hierarchy is that every single thing that defines your character's role on both a mechanical and narrative level is based entirely on your choice of class. Meanwhile, race does nothing besides alter a few variables and might have a ribbon feat here and there to differentiate itself.
A huge problem is MMO design backwashing into single player RPGs. In a mmo, you want to design encounters that maximally waste the players time through extremely tight tuning - enrages, body checks, branching and randomized phases of boss encounters. To the end, classes and races have to be equivalent to each other, or people will just play optimally and exclude those who don’t. That shit doesn’t matter in a single player game. That cretin Sawyer suffered from it particularly in PoE2 with his retarded interest in balance and encounter design. It’s a single player game - the goal should be to make it interesting and immersive, not “balanced.” Having some race /class combinations be flat out worse is still not enough - the sexes of the races should also have different playstyles. If you want to play the game as a 80 lbs elf warrior maiden, you should have to use your wits to survive, or end up as bandit plapmeat. The old /tg/meme of -4 strength didn’t go far enough.
>>4057749As someone that sunk dozens of hour in this all I can say that the reviews are right. You can get locked out at any time. In combat. In travel. Or in a city. Also it's pretty simple(if you already know how rolling characters in AD&D works - if you played BG1/2 you won't have much problems) and you can't get a cool Nautiloid only human ships.
>>4069592I can see why.Were there any RPGs were races had their own classes?
>>4073333>Were there any RPGs were races had their own classes?A little game called "Dungeons and Dragons", you may have heard of it? Paladins were locked to humans only.
>>4073341>comma outside the quotation markbrown detected
>>4073341Suck my quads.
>>4057546>differences between D&D, AD&D, and AD&D2e are large enough to consider them completely separatebetween D&D/basic D&D and AD&D, yeah surenot really true for 1e and 2ethere are differences but it's the one time the word "edition" is actually accurate in D&D naming 2e is literally just that, a second edition of the same game
>>4075124no XP for gold is a pretty major difference
>>4057424the elephant in the room is that D&D rules were always byzantine shit, too complicated to make the game playable, too stupid and arbitrary to make any sense. You didn't play D&D because it was a well-crafted game, you played it because it was impossible to find anyone else who cared about GURPS. This was true in 1978, still true today, and will always be true.
>>4076985 there is XP for gold in both editionsIt's just not the default way of handling xp on 2e
>>4078026every anon who types like this looks like they're all the same zoomer arguing with himself
>>4078026Where are my "no XP for fighting, only XP for gold" video games
>>4079018Make a small mod yourself for TES games such that using skills provides no experience gain, and skills only increase by paying for training. EZ
>>4074519that's how civilized nations write it, fag burger
>>4079832Retards with no sense of grammar comprehension place the comma outside the parenthesis.
>>4080382“The point of the comma,” anon reminded him, “is for clarity and smoothness when one is breaking up a verbatim quote.”
>>4080561The placement, here, is correct.
>>4079018Ultima 3 I think
>>4074519tfw zoomers who type like this dare to correct the grammar of others
wrong. dwarves and halflings could be clerics. the most annoying this was the level cap though, like you can be a dwarf cleric but u max out at level 10? why?
>>4082156Gygax wanted demihumans as sidekicks only because he was more of a sword and sorcery or medievalist guy than a high fantasy Tolkien guy
>>4078037ok esl brownoid
>>4057749i pirated it way back in the day when it came out but it never seemed to have a point if there was supposed to be a plot or goal i never figured it out but maybe it was explained in the player's guide slash manual which i didn't have
>>4057327Welcome to old-school D&D, when the publishers weren't afraid of being called racists for disallowing halfling paladins.
>>4081948I'm not a Zoomer. Zoomers don't know how to use proper grammar.
>>4057749I bankrupted myself after picking a fight that was out of my league. Gonna roll up a new character and try again. I am having a lot of fun, though. I should do what you did and take some notes. I think it'll be helpful to mark down which planets pay more for which goods, and which ones have the highest taxes.>>4082629After doing some jobs, I was approached by a government official who offered me a shit ton of money and a better helm if I blow up a giant slaver base. The pirate lord of Garden also threw in a treasure map and said he'd help me destroy it.
>>4069452:(Accurate.
GEORGE IS IN WEIRD TROUBLE
>>4096620Wow, that lizardman sure is packing a lot of CARGO!!>Let him unpack his CARGO? Y/N?
>>4096740>Escape>Escape>Escape
Grognards never stop being sadly amusing.
>>4077834The thing is, nerds are attracted to unwarranted complexity. Back when RPGs were a niche nerd hobby, this was a selling point for AD&D.
>>4073341>Paladins were locked to humans only.Quite right too. Demi-humans don't have souls.
I played through Pools with a heavily multiclass party because I (rightly) figured I wouldn't persevere through the later games. Also I heard the sequels weren't as inventive as Pools in terms of quest design.Any tips for making characters for Azure Bonds forward? I assume dual class humans are the meta choice.Oh yeah, and paladins and rangers aren't in Pools, another reason I didn't build with the later games in mind.
I'm playing on my C64 and I'm about halfway done clearing the ruins, the first dungeon. I got a little lost and exited through a tunnel to the outside! It was lucky I was able to save and then camp and learn spells. I headed off into the wilderness and got killed though.I'm ready to level up now (still lvl 1). I have a thief/mage I've been using to detect magic, my other two mages devoted to casting the sleep spell so far. I think as soon as these mages level up I will retire the thief / mage in favor of a pure thief. While my thief / mage can wear leather armor, for whatever reason she can't use a dagger. I always thought mages could use a dagger.Anyway she's just a temporary character at this point, a real thief who can backstab will be much better. It'll leave me with two fighters, a cleric, a thief, and two mages.>>4104638Nobody will know if you just use a character editor to recreate your characters for the later games. The saved game file's contents do not possess souls.
>>4104638>Curse of the Azure BondsEither start with 6 Human Paladins and dual-class some or all to Clerics and Mages or use some multi-classed Elven Fighter-Mages instead of some of those Paladins>Secret of the Silver BladesDefinitely start with 6 Human Paladins and dual-class again.>Pool of DarknessThere is some postgame dungeon which requires a thief. (This is the only part in all the official goldbox games where you need a thief.) If you don't care about this dungeon you can do the same as in Secret of the Silver Blades but wait until your Paladins are level 13 for the extra half-attack. If you want the secret dungeon you either have to create a Fighter and dual it to a thief (a Paladin can't dual to a thief because of alignment restrictions) or create a triple classed Elven Fighter/Mage/Thief.Those are the min-max tactics anyway.
>>4107526there's content in PoR that requires a thief. there's a well that only thieves can enter that requires a climb walls check
>>4107526>start with 6 Human PaladinsI love doing this in every party based game
fun fact. there's an item in the game that players at the time would have 0 way of knowing how to use without the actual D&D rulebooks. there is no in game dialogue, journal entry, or information in the game manual about what to do with the Manual of Bodily Health. read it and rest for 31 days.
>>4108435>RTFMMany such cases
>>4108444yes, but not the manual that came with the game. read a non computer based product that cost $20 (in 1988 money), and one intended for game masters, not even players. (the info was in the Dungeon Master's Guide)
>>4108446it’s a Manual and you have to Read it
